Navigate: Academic Planner Overview

Introducing Navigate's Student Academic Planner

Academic Planner is a course planning and scheduling tool designed to help students complete their degrees in a timely way and to support staff in course selection advising. In this article, we cover the functionality in this module.

What: Academic Planner is a tool students use to plan classes for their current and upcoming terms. These plans can be shared with staff members.

Where: Academic Planner for students is located on the Planner tab in Navigate Student. Academic Planner should be accessed from a computer.

Who: Academic Planner is used by students.

Student Access to Academic Planning

Students access Academic Planner by clicking Planner on the desktop version of Navigate Student.

A guide has been added to Planner to provide students with an overview of academic planning features. It contains all the major steps a student needs to take to successfully create a plan, including selecting a template, adding courses to a plan, and accessing advisor plans, along with animated gifs to help visualize the process. This guide shows to students the first time they open the planner.

Academic Plan

Below is the My Planner page that appears when the student accesses the Planner. Note that the example is of a student who has previously begun using the Academic Planning tool.

Students can expand or collapse the left and right panels in the Planner. The center panel can be expanded to fill the entire screen or reduced to its normal size.

My Planner has three panels.

• Planning Tools. This part of Academic Planner contains template plans the student has added, the ability to search for courses in the course catalog, and links to advisor plans that have been sent to the student. 
• Selected Template Details. The center panel shows the student's selected template by default. This panel will populate with the Advisor Plans when the student selects it from Planning Tools. Students can expand or collapse all slots on this panel when reviewing a template.
• My Academic Plan. This panel shows the terms students have added to their plan as well as any courses or placeholders added to the terms. Students can schedule their courses if registration is open by going to the scheduler. Remind students that planned courses in Academic Planner are neither scheduled nor registered.

Adding a Template

To add a template and create a plan from the template, the student clicks Add Template in the Templates section of Planning Tools.

A list of templates appears in the center panel. Templates that match the student's current academic goal(s) and catalog year will be indicated with a green star in the Recommended column and appear at the top of the list.

To add a template from the list, the student clicks the Add to My Templates button. The student can also search for a template using the search bar.

After adding templates, students also see a link to View Selected Templates. If students select or deselect a checkbox, the Selected Templates Details update in the center panel. These selections are saved and will persist so that students will see them when they log in again.

Adding Terms to a Template

To add a term, the student goes to the My Academic Plan panel and selects Add a Term from the menu. A list of terms appears below the button. The student then selects a term and it is added to the plan.

Students can then plan courses for the term, or remove the term. They can also see credits planned for a term and if a term is finished, the credits earned.

Adding Courses to an Academic Plan

Important: Adding courses to an Academic Plan does not mean the student has scheduled or registered for those courses.

Academic Planner uses template slots on academic templates. Some slots will have more than one course that fulfills it, and some will have only one. 

To see what courses fulfill the template slot's requirements, students click the arrow next to a slot to expand.

Students have a choice when making their plan. They may choose to add a particular course to a plan, or they can add the slot as a placeholder and select the actual course later when they schedule and register for courses. To plan the placeholder, they select the hamburger menu next to the slot name and select a term after selecting Add Placeholder to Term.

To add a specific course in an academic plan, click the arrow and expand the slot. The list of courses will appear. Click the hamburger menu next to the course to add, click Add to Term, then select a term from the dropdown that opens.

Students can also bulk add courses to a single term. First, toggle Bulk Add to Term on.

Check boxes for any courses and/or placeholders you want to add for a single term. Then, choose a term that appears when you click Add to Term. Students must have first added these terms to their My Academic Plan to appear as options in Bulk Add to Term.

Reviewing Advisor Plans

In Academic Planning, advisors can create full Advisor Plans for students. Advisors can create as many plans as they like, which are visible on the list of Advisor Plans, which can be found in Planning Tools. Students can see all sent advisor plans and may not delete advisor plans.

Students can add individual slots and bulk add slots to terms from Advisor Plans just as they can from other templates. The student can also see if the advisor recommendations are matched in their plan by turning the Show Matched Column on.

If an advisor has added comments on the course, placeholder, term, or plan level, these are visible by clicking the comment icon.

When a student selects an Advisor Plan, it appears in the center panel. Students can add individual slots and bulk add slots to terms from Advisor Plans just as they can from other templates. If an advisor has added comments on the course, placeholder, term, or plan level, these are visible by clicking the comment icon.

Printing a Plan

Students can print their planned and completed terms by selecting Print from the My Academic Plan menu. The student can print the plan that opens or save it as a PDF.